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Marx, K 2

See Main Karl Marx

Name: Karl Marx

Achievements: Marxism.

Born: May 5, 1818; Trier, Germany

Died: March 14, 1883; London, England (Aged 65)

Field & Discipline: Politics; Economics; History: Theorist

Language: German; English

Father: Heinrich Marx

Mother: Henrietta Pressburg

Siblings: 8

Spouse: Jenny von Westphalen

Children: 3 surviving daughters: Eleanor, Jenny, Laura

Education: Privately at home; Grammar  School, Trier; University of Bonn; University of Berlin

Major Work:

“Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei” (1848, “Communist Manifesto”)

“Das Kapital”  (1867-“Capitalism”)

Life & Times:

At university Marx studied law, philosophy and history,  discovered the philosophy of [influenced by] Hegel*,  and became involved with the Young Hegelians who were turning to atheism and republicanism.

Hegel stated that everything in the universe is in a continual process of change and is working towards “the consciousness of liberty”. He introduced the dialectic as the model of the process of change: thesis is challenged by anti-thesis and results in synthesis, which in itself becomes the new thesis.

Hegel was talking of spiritual and intellectual conflict in the world of ideas,  but Marx was also influenced by the work of Ludwig Fuerbach who was a materialist. Marx was therefore concerned with changes in the real world leading to freedom from oppression, and with the conflicts  which brought about these changes in society.

He expressed his views on subjects such as censorship in the “Rheinische Zeitung”, a newly established liberal democratic paper in Cologne, to which the socialist [fellow-journalist was] Moses Hess* also contributed. Marx became editor of the paper in October 1842 and showed himself to be an early pioneer of documentary reportage in his accounts of the lives of peasants in the Moselle district.

When the paper was suspended by the authorities, Marx became co-editor of the “German-French Yearbooks,” a liberal journal which published in Paris and distributed in the German underground press.

In 1843 he moved with his wife to Paris, where he met [collaborated with] Engels*, a German radical who much influenced by Hess, and more revolutionary social reformers like the Russian anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin.

Marx began to develop his own ideas and to study the work of the English economists [studied work of] Ricardo*, [studied work of] Adam Smith* and [studied work of] James Mill*.  One of Marx’s articles included the now famous observation that religion is the “opium of the people” and in 1844, he wrote “The Holy Family,” a critique of Hegelian idealism.

In response to pressure from Prussia, the French authorities expelled Marx and in 1845 he arrived in Brussels, where he renounced his Prussian nationality. Engels followed and the two men began working together.  In “The German Ideology” (1845-6, published 1932) they set out to show how, throughout history, societies had been organized to protect the interests of the rich and powerful.

In 1847 Marx and Engels joined a secret society of German immigrants in London called the “Communist League” which commissioned them to prepare its political programme. Together, they produced the “Communist Manifesto” (1847-8) in which they stated that history consisted of the struggles of the oppressed against their oppressors and that when the proletariat took power there would be an end of class divisions within society. It was the first published declaration of international socialism and ended with a call for the workers of the world to unite. 

Marx and Engels had hopes that the Chartist movement in Britain would unite the workers and when the Chartist leader Feargus [sympathizer of] O’Connor* was elected to Parliament in 1847 they sent him their congratulations. 

During the revolution of 1848 in Germany, Marx returned to Cologne where he set up the New Rhenish Gazette,”  as a mouthpiece for the liberal bourgeois intelligentsia.  Marx organised the first Democratic Congress in Prussia,  but when the liberal Prussian parliament in Berlin was shut down by the king,  Marx called for armed resistance and his professional bourgeois readers deserted the “Gazette”. Marx was arrested for incitement to armed rebellion. He was acquitted by a sympathetic jury in Cologne but was expelled from Prussia in May 1849. 

He went to London where he remained for the rest of his life, devoting his time to an analysis of capitalism and to attempts to organize the conditions which would bring about its overthrow. He never had a regular income or a permanent job and for some years the family lived in two small rooms and were often reduced to living on bread and potatoes. Three of his children died through lack of medical care and his wife, who on one occasion had to borrow money to buy a coffin for their child,  succumbed to a succession of nervous breakdowns. 

For many years Marx remained virtually unknown outside a small circle of intellectuals and German exiles.  He spent most of his days in the reading room of the British Museum, studying history and reading works such as that by [studied work of] Babbage* on the economy of machinery and manufactures.

During the 1850’s, he reported on political affairs and social conflicts worldwide for the “New York Tribune” whose editor, [worked for] Greeley*, was an admirer of Utopian socialism.

Between 1852 and ’62, with the help of Engels, Marx wrote nearly 500 articles on world politics. He also wrote books which included “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” (1852) and  “The Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century” (1856). In 1859 he published what later became one of his best-known works: “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.” 

He became a more public figure when the International Working Men’s Association was founded in 1864 and he became a member of the General Council as well as corresponding secretary for Germany.   He wrote the Association’s “Inaugural Address” in which he drew a picture of contemporary British economic conditions and made the point that the working class had not shared in the rise in living standards brought about by the advances in industry and technology.  He referred to the work of the early Utopian socialist [influenced by] Robert Owen* and emphasised the importance of trade unions and the democratization of politics. 

In 1865 he wrote “Wages, Prices, Profit,”  an economic treatise in which he set out his view of the historically determined relations of production (later challenged by economist [views challenged by] Alfred Marshall*).   Marx became well-known in Europe during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) when he supported the Paris Commune and from this time he was regarded as a revolutionary communist.

The article he wrote in praise of the Commune (“Civil War in France”) caused a rift with English trade union leaders and socialists who found their cause better served by an alliance with Liberals.  Marx spent the last ten years of his life virtually in retirement, writing his most famous work, “Das Kapital” (“Capitalism”). Only the first volume of “Das Kapital” was published during Marx’s lifetime, the second and third volumes being edited by Engels and published after Marx’s death.

“Das Kapital” is an exposition of political and economic theory based on Marx’s philosophy of Hegel’s [developed Hegel’s theory of] dialectic* as dialectical materialism,  which takes the economic reality as the determining factor in society. His economic theory was mainly an analysis of capitalism, using England as a contemporary model:  economics includes the forces of production (the technological condition of producing and exchanging goods) and the relations of production (the system of property ownership). This determines the division in society between those who exploit and those who are exploited.  It also determines the nature of government, religion and culture in a society because each society has an ideology that amounts to a body of officially sanctioned beliefs justifying the power and status of the exploiters. 

In an historical review, Marx describes how after the first stage of primitive communism, exploitation is introduced,  and how the transition from feudalism to capitalism, especially in England,  creates a new ruling class: the bourgeoisie. 

Capitalism is based on the exploitation of the working class by the owners of capital.  Profits come from the difference between the wages paid for labor and the value of the product. The value of labor is determined by the labor necessary to produce the product. Wages are pushed down to subsistence level by a rise in population, and they are held down by an increasing number of unemployed. The difference between wage levels and the value of a product is the surplus value. It is the surplus value which is taken by the capitalist as profit. 

Marx attacked capitalism both morally and economically with his theory of exploitation and surplus value. In line with his dialectic approach, Marx also argued that the contradictions inherent in capitalism would eventually destroy it. 

His Law of Accumulation states that capitalists accrue more capital by reinvesting profits in order to cut labor costs and increase production. His Law of Concentration states that small capitalists will be forced out of business and into the working class. More and more people will suffer poverty because of labor-saving machinery, depressed wages and unemployment. Eventually, the increased concentration of capitalists will cause such misery that the proletariat will revolt.

According to Marxian dialectic this is a stage of history in which the ruling class of the bourgeoisie is overthrown, and is as inevitable as was the overthrow of feudalism by capitalism.

His ethical position was to censor self-interest, and advocate equality and fraternity. According to his view,  the new ruling class, the proletarians, would abolish capitalist private ownership as the means of production, eliminate class divisions and establish a classless society of communism. The dialectic would then end. Eventually, there would be no need for people to be paid for their work and the state would disappear altogether. Society would then be able to proclaim, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”.

Marx envisaged that this process, which would begin in the most industrially-advanced societies, would necessarily be the result of violent revolution,  but that in Britain and the United States it might be achieved peacefully through the vote.  

In 1872 Marx sent a copy of the second printing of “Das Kapital” to [admired] Charles Darwin* whom he had always admired for what Marx saw as scientific corroboration of his own materialist philosophy. He asked Darwin if he could dedicate his work to him but the Darwin refused,  saying that Marx’s stance on religion would hurt members of Darwin’s family.

Marx did not approve of the manifesto of the German Social Democratic Party, formed in 1875, believing they were taking too moderate a stance. He was, however, pleased when the Tsar of Russia (Alexander II) was assassinated in 1881 and hoped that this would start a process by which all working classes would rise up. 

But Marx’s ideas were not taken up by the British proletariat although in the 1880’s, although in Britain The Socialist League was formed. It was led for a time by [a follower was] William Morris* and included Marx’s daughter, [daughter was] Eleanor Marx*, among its members.

Marxism was for decades a worldwide force,  and among those influenced by Marxist ideology during the twentieth century were [influenced] Nehru*, [influenced] Stalin*, [influenced] Mao Ze Dong* and [influenced] Oswald*.

Assessment: One of history’s significant figures.

Oneliner: Carl Marx,  founder of communist movement

Bibliography: